The Dark
I write about darkness a lot.
Night.
Shadows.
Moonlight.
Ghosts.
The things that hide in corners and the things we carry where no one else can see them.
If you’ve read much of my writing, you could probably assume I find some kind of comfort in the dark.
And maybe sometimes I do.
But then I wrote a poem that started with:
I hate the dark.
And I meant it.
The Dark
I hate the dark.
It reminds me of myself.
Not because I am cruel.
Not because I was born
wanting to swallow light.
But because I’ve spent
so much of my life
learning how to survive
where the sun
couldn’t reach.
People romanticize darkness.
They give it stars.
They give it moons.
They write poems
about how beautiful
the night can be.
They forget
how cold it is.
How quiet.
How easy it is
to mistake loneliness
for peace.
I know darkness intimately.
I know the way
it settles into a room
before anyone notices.
The way it convinces you
that silence
is the same thing
as healing.
The way it teaches you
to become invisible
just to make it
through another day.
I hate the dark.
Because every time
I walk into it,
I meet another version
of myself.
The little girl
who kept waiting
for someone
to come looking.
The teenager
who mistook hurting
for relief.
The woman
who kept shrinking
so other people
could feel taller.
They are all there.
Patient.
Waiting for me
like ghosts
that never learned
how to leave home.
Sometimes I wonder
if Nyx recognizes me.
If the goddess of night
looks at me
with something
that almost resembles pity.
Or maybe recognition.
Maybe she knows
that not everyone
who carries darkness
belongs to it.
Maybe she knows
there is a difference
between becoming familiar
with the night
and calling it home.
I hate the dark.
Not because it reminds me
of what I’ve survived.
But because for so many years,
I couldn’t tell
where it ended—
and where I began.
Now,
I’m learning
the hardest thing
I’ve ever had to learn:
Darkness
can shape you
without defining you.
And maybe
that’s the first light
I’ve ever trusted.
I think sometimes we become so familiar with something that we stop realizing it isn’t supposed to feel like home.
That can happen with sadness.
With loneliness.
With survival mode.
With the parts of ourselves we built because, at the time, we needed them.
Stay quiet.
Don’t take up too much space.
Don’t need too much.
Don’t trust too easily.
Keep going.
Survive first.
Feel it later.
You do something long enough and eventually it stops feeling like something you do.
It starts feeling like who you are.
That’s the darkness in this poem.
Not evil.
Not something lurking beneath the bed.
Not even necessarily sadness.
Familiarity.
That’s why I wrote:
How easy it is
to mistake loneliness
for peace.
There is a difference between being at peace and simply becoming accustomed to being alone with something.
There is a difference between healing and going quiet.
There is a difference between no longer talking about what hurt you and no longer being hurt by it.
I think I’ve confused those things before.
Maybe that’s why all those different versions of me are still standing in the darkness of this poem.
The little girl.
The teenager.
The woman.
None of them disappeared when the next one arrived.
And I don’t think healing requires them to.
They aren’t monsters that need to be defeated.
They’re evidence.
They existed.
They survived.
They became part of me.
But being part of me isn’t the same thing as being all of me.
That distinction became the most important part of this poem.
And then there’s Nyx.
The goddess of night herself.
I didn’t want her to appear as something frightening. I didn’t even want her to save me.
I wanted her to recognize me.
Because who better to understand that carrying darkness doesn’t mean you belong to it than the night itself?
Maybe she could look at someone who has spent years walking through darkness and understand something that person is only beginning to understand:
there is a difference
between becoming familiar
with the night
and calling it home.
I think that might be my favorite idea in the poem.
Because for a long time, I thought healing meant becoming someone untouched by the things that happened before.
Someone lighter.
Someone different.
Someone who didn’t carry any of it anymore.
I don’t think that now.
Some things shape us permanently.
There are things we survive that change the way we love, trust, react, protect ourselves, and move through the world.
But being shaped by something doesn’t mean surrendering your identity to it.
You can carry darkness without being dark.
You can remember pain without living inside it.
You can know the night intimately and still choose to walk toward morning.
Maybe that’s why the poem doesn’t end with the darkness disappearing.
It ends with light.
Not sunlight.
Not some enormous, blinding revelation.
Just the smallest realization:
Darkness
can shape you
without defining you.
And maybe
that’s the first light
I’ve ever trusted.
The darkness is still there.
The difference is that now—
I know where it ends and I begin.
Until next time,
—Destiny
P.S. Maybe we don’t have to hate every version of ourselves that learned how to survive in the dark. Some of them are the reason we lived long enough to find the light. 🖤
destinylaharris 